The Gulf of Mexico is on fire, set on fire by another oil and gas corporation. This time it’s Mexican. Natural gas is burning. Such surrealistic paintings bring us closer to extinction, and it’s speeding up.
Mexico’s state-owned oil company said on June, 2 it suffered a rupture in an undersea gas pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico, sending flames boiling to the surface in the Gulf waters, ABC reports.
Petroleos Mexicanos said it had dispatched fire control boats to pump more water over the flames.
Pemex, as the company is known, said nobody was injured in the incident in the offshore Ku-Maloob-Zaap field.
The leak near dawn Friday occurred about 150 yards (meters) from a drilling platform. The company said it had brought the gas leak under control about five hours later.
But the accident gave rise to the strange sight of roiling balls of flame boiling up from below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
It was unclear how much environmental damage the gas leak and oceanic fireball had caused.
Miyoko Sakashita, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote that “the frightening footage of the Gulf of Mexico is showing the world that offshore drilling is dirty and dangerous.”
Sakashita added, “These horrific accidents will continue to harm the Gulf if we don’t end offshore drilling once and for all.”
Gulf of Mexico ocean fire extinguished after Pemex pipeline rupture
A fire on the ocean surface west of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula has been extinguished, with state-owned oil company Pemex blaming a gas leak from an underwater pipeline for sparking the blaze that was captured in videos shared widely on social media.
Bright orange flames jumping out of water resembling molten lava was dubbed an “eye of fire” on social media due to the blaze’s circular shape, as it raged a short distance from a Pemex oil platform.
The fire began in an underwater pipeline that connects to a platform at Pemex’s flagship Ku-Maloob-Zaap oil development, the company’s most important, four sources told Reuters earlier.
Pemex said no injuries were reported and production from the project was not affected after the gas leak ignited around 5:15 am local time.
The company, which has a long record of major industrial accidents at its facilities, added it also shut the valves of the 12-inch-diameter pipeline.
Angel Carrizales, head of Mexico’s oil safety regulator ASEA, wrote on Twitter that the incident “did not generate any spill”.
He did not explain what was burning on the water’s surface.
“The turbomachinery of Ku Maloob Zaap’s active production facilities were affected by an electrical storm and heavy rains,” according to an incident report shared by one of Reuters’ sources. Those details were not mentioned in Pemex’s statement.
Company workers used nitrogen to control the fire, according to one of the sources.
Pemex added that it would investigate the cause of the incident.
